“Hillary’s Millennial supporters turn their backs on her! How she lost her key demographic.” -FreedomEagle1776 News on Facebook
Pro tip: Practice aiming the rear camera at yourself without looking at the screen. Front cameras are always lower resolution, and don’t cope with low light as well.
I was watching So You Think You Can Dance a year ago, and was wondering why when the dancer was walking by the crowd all the screaming fans were turning away from him.
It, um, took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize why.
It would be deeply ironic if Robin’s numbers skyrocket because the ‘good’ people of Bloomington thing the idea of their representative having had lesbian sex with a ‘hot blonde chick’ is a positive thing.
Yes, I am that cynical about human behaviour when dealing with large groups.
Most of the people on this comment board are fairly progressive, LGBTQ-friendly types. As such, they all need to keep one important thing in mind:
America is FAR more conservative than our experiences will tell us it is.
Progressives tend to surround themselves with progressive friends, live in progressive-friendly neighborhoods, and filter their news towards progressive topics. This means there are LARGE SWATHS of Americana (and Canadiana? Australiana? Other ‘-ana’s? Are those the right terms?) we are completely unfamiliar with. We walk blindly into elections, confident that our side will win, because everyone we know is gung-ho for it, and we’re completely poleaxed when we lose, because who would have voted against us?
The solution? We need to tear our filters down. We need to listen to the hate rhetoric the other side is spewing, even though it disgusts us. We need to understand just how strong our opponents are, if only to know how hard we need to fight them.
(Wow, that turned out long. Probably not even the best place for it. But then, what is?)
izzy
But I don’t find Breitbart all that informative or even entertaining for that matter.
Pat
Empathic people who care about others and “filter their news” towards, actual news should listen to the people who None of the Above more? Uh, maybe people who don’t listen or learn need to do some.
Killjoy
Even at the most cynical and adversarial level… one should know one’s enemies.
Pat
We already do. Almost by definition.
Killjoy
And if one side isn’t willing to tear down its echo chamber and rip out its filters and stop acting like there are multiple Americas… then they can’t really ask the other side to do it.
Pat
One “side’s” “echo chamber” is called “reality”, though.
They’re. Not. Sports teams.
TheGrammarLegionary
Disclaimer: I’m not American, and therefore not strictly a ‘Democrat’. That said, I’m very left-leaning in my personal views.
We on the left DO have our own echo chamber. Everyone has their reasons for jumping into one, but if you think the right-wing doesn’t also think their echo chamber is “reality”, then frankly, you’re missing the concept. There was a video of some British guy going absolutely ballistic making the rounds after Trump got elected making some very good points about this; above all, he pointed out that the left won the culture war. No, homophobia didn’t end last year with the supreme court decision in June, just like racism is still a thing; that didn’t end in the ’60s either. But we liberals are all too comfortable (myself included) with calling nearly half of America “a basket of deplorables”.
There’s evidence of this echo chamber effect on the left. Ask most Democrats if they remember the “Delete your account” tweet, they’ll smile as they relive the assorted variations of “DAAAAAAMN, SON!” we all screamed like Clinton had just dropped the mic at a rap battle. Ask if they remember Trump’s response, they almost certainly never saw it, and probably didn’t/don’t care. But he had one: “Just like the 30,000 emails you deleted?” Sure, the national security threat was blown out of perspective, but she’s admitted that it happened, and that it was a mistake.
Again, still would’ve voted Clinton… but damn, son.
I’m not saying all opinions are created equal, I’m not saying our echo chamber is just as harmful as the one on the right, but we do ourselves no favours by hiding in it. Step out of it, SNAP out of it, and engage in the debate, because we didn’t win the culture war by simply knowing we were on the right side of history. It came from boycotting buses and the Stonewall riots and people actually communicating with the other side however they could. And sharing every #BlackLivesMatter and #ImWithHer with all your liberal friends ISN’T communicating with the other side.
You’re absolutely right that these aren’t sports teams we’re dealing with, and this is NOT A GAME. This isn’t even a culture war anymore (though it could be if we undo the progress of the last decade). This is now a crash course in advanced civics, and we have four years to pick our grades up or just keep having this conversation. America can’t get away with having an uneducated public anymore. NO nation can get away with it anymore, because the blueprint has been laid out, and to use one more tired cliché, if we don’t learn from history, we will repeat it. But this time, it won’t be centuries or decades later, it’ll be across space instead. Across borders. The demagogues and narcissists will take over, and we’ll be back to tyrants starting wars to soothe their inflated egos.
And yes, I say this as a non-American. I’m watching this from the outside. But the second you think “oh, that can’t happen here”, you’re making the same mistake. All non-Americans reading this, check your political landscape and look around. My fellow Canadians in particular, don’t be complacent because we just elected Trudeau, we’re not them; we are not the liberal haven we’d like to think. I live in a town where “Fuck Trudeau” bumper stickers are common and on my way home from work, I can see “WHITE POWER” literally etched into the sidewalk. I took pictures before the snow covered it. Google “Kevin O’Leary”, and then tell me Trump can’t happen here.
BBCC
Also – Kellie Leitch.
It’s one thing to say a group is deplorable – that can be (and is) true, just looking at what they’ve backed. It’s another not to engage them where you see them. Sometimes you can’t – lack of spoons, lack of time, whatever. But if you can, it can be a good thing.
thejeff
No, we didn’t “win” the culture war. We’re still in the middle of it. Hell, we didn’t even “win” the racial or gender equivalents. Those are still going on too. We just lost a major battle in all of them, probably more than one.
We’ve won some battles, but the other side has retrenched and is coming back strong.
And we didn’t really win any of those battles by sitting down politely with the racists and the sexists and the homophobes and listening to all the reasons why they hated and explaining why they should stop. The battles were won with boycotts and riots and organization. By people standing up and saying “We are here and we have rights and we are not going away.” And then someone else stepping up when the first one got smashed down.
On the individual level, with friends and family you can sometimes make progress through communication. Especially with someone coming out as queer, since they knew you and liked you before then – not so much with race and gender. Even then though it’s at great risk. Lots of people have lost friends and family over it. Many suffered abuse or worse.
TheGrammarLegionary
Perhaps “win” is a little strong… but that doesn’t change the fact that the Trump supporters are, in many people’s minds, a pack of racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted degenerates (and let’s sprinkle in some jokes about cousins in Alabama for good measure). And what’s more, this is the accepted party line from the left now. “Basket of deplorables”. As in ‘if you voted Republican, we’re allowed to say this about you’. No, racism is not over, homophobia isn’t over, misogyny is NOT OVER. Anyone who says they are is not paying attention. But short of the drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, the racists at least have to hide that or we tear them apart. And I’m glad we recognize these things for what they are now, and I’m glad bigotry has consequences. But we need to remember this:
We the commenters unleashed all manner of vitriol on Roz for this. Yes, Joyce was already coming around, I read the threads. The point is, insults are a lousy debate tool. No, we didn’t make the progress of the last fifty years with polite conversation and calm, gentle education, and I never said we did. It came from communication, or perhaps more accurately, expression. When words failed, the civil rights movement expressed its anger through actions. They got louder, and they articulated their positions in the language of fire and rage. Birmingham. Stonewall. Malcolm X.
Things are different now. You’re exactly right that we are now LOSING battles, but we are still ahead of where we were in the ’60s. Our side has real power now, even without the political power of the Obama administration. We rarely need to resort to riots anymore, and we sure as hell don’t need to resort to hurling insults. What we need is to continue engaging, in the media (not social media, in our echo chambers, going outside) and on an individual level. NOW is the time for conversation and rational debate. Like BBCC said above, it’s not always possible, it’s still not even always safe. But if we take what opportunities we have, we can finish this. Peacefully.
Three hours ago, I had a friend (trans) tell me about the time he tried to kill himself. I would have been almost the last person he spoke to. I had done everything I could. And this feeling is familiar now. Every time I hear the old lines (‘love the sinner, hate the sin’, ‘pray for them to change’, ‘it’s a choice, they can live differently’), I have to step away and breathe before I tear into them and their worldview. I’ve learned that you can’t smash through the bubble from the outside; you have to be let in first and disrupt the echoes there. Any time I’ve ever seen someone come around on things like this, it has been from inside the bubble. So engage, personally, and teach them how to break out.
Killjoy
Right up until the returns started coming in, the American “left” was telling itself that Hillary Clinton had election in the bag…
Killjoy
If you think only one side has an echo chamber… that probably makes my point for me.
Toad
The left does not have a monopoly on truth, and the right does not have a monopoly on propaganda/lies/”fake news”. Anyone presenting the news to you has an agenda of some sort–it is important to keep this in mind when considering the “official story,” no matter who it comes from. There is no genuinely neutral, objective read on any news story of consequence.
For instance, consider that 50% of Clinton voters polled believe that Russians tampered with the actual vote count (beyond simple pre-election propaganda/leaks), despite there being no evidence of this whatsoever, probably in large part because generally reputable news agencies keep talking about Russia “hacking” the election. There have been countless examples from this election alone of well-meaning liberals sharing articles and memes built on misleading quotes, misused statistics, or outright fabrications.
Donald Trump is gleeful and blatant in his disregard for facts, in a way rarely seen in American politics. But do not make the mistake of thinking that this means that his political opponents necessarily have facts on their side. I have a healthy skepticism about the whole idea that liberals, leftists, and minorities have to go try to forge connections with their political opponents–as you say, politics is real and important, not just an academic ideological pastime. But do not think for a second that liberals live in “reality” while conservatives live in a fantasy world.
Pat
We don’t have a monopoly on truth. We do however, have positions that are truth-based. That’s kind of important.
Rose
As a trans person, I am perfectly aware that there are tons of people who want me to disappear without a sound. That’s why I place myself in environments like the ones you describe. So I can remain myself, and safe.
Honestly, the minorities are not surprised when this stuff goes down. We expect it. We know who’s out there. We deal with them IRL constantly. That outpouring of disbelief and rage is because we believe that the world is better than the baseline.
The answer isn’t to try to “understand” the extremist normal. It’s to defend what we have with every scrap of fire we can summon, and to make it normal, in little ways and little places, so that others, closeted, out there in hostile territory, will someday find us and realize that they are not alone. Like I had to. Like most of my friends did.
This isn’t about diplomacy. It’s about passing the torch. It’s survival. I will forgive their trespass when they forget that they hate my existence.
Killjoy
Somehow we talk about the broader “right”, and it always snaps right back to “those people who hate _____”… as if everyone to the “right” of line X on any issue is also a bigot/racist/sexist/genderist/whatever. Or maybe as if that’s the only issue in the world.
If you happen to be one of the people they hate so much that they want you to die, that “issue” may as well be the only one that matters.
Same goes for if there’s someone you care about that you’re trying to protect from them.
Rose
I have plenty of conservative friends. I’m not referring to them. I am rather displeased with them right now, because I believe their wilful ignorance of part of their community is creating something dangerous for me, but they are not the core issue. The core issue is that there are people who don’t want me to exist. Those people are who I have to consider when I’m building my life.
I’m really tired of the “left’s responsible for this too! take your lumps!” I’m not responsible for the democratic party’s foul. I’m going to take those lumps anyway. So’s the rest of my community. That’s why we’ve been so damn mad.
BBCC
……You seem to be forgetting that the polls all (or majority wise) predicted a Clinton win too. This wasn’t just people being poleaxed because disagreement. The win surprised everyone – pollsters, election experts, and most people, including Trump supporters too.
Listening to news from either side (as long as it’s actual news and not faux news) is one thing. That said, people will make friends with people who respect them. Bigots fundamentally do not respect marginalized folks and reducing it to partisan issues or ‘political opinions’ is a dismissal of said marginalized people’s humanity.
People also aren’t going to live somewhere they are not safe if they can help it, so for marginalized people, it makes most sense to live around people who don’t want to remove their civil rights.
Keeping yourself safe and your friendships, y’know, friendships are not immoral echo chamber actions. They’re the way friendships and (ideal) living situations work.
There’s also the possibility that they have a heart to heart and Leslie deletes it (like Sal did with that app)… or that she will try to delete it and end up sending it to everyone on her phone.
In hindsight putting the delete option right next to the immediately send to all contacts without asking for confirmation option seems like a deliberate design law.
Shade
*flaw rather
Griiins
no no, I think Design law is the correct usage, those guys knew what they were doing.
Oberon
I’d think that you made a typo when you used ‘law’ instead of ‘flaw,’ but then I realized just how appropriate that phrasing was.
Griiins
Phrasing! its fun for the whole family (sold right next to apples to apples!)
Having one set of rules for some of the population and one set for another based on what they believe is shitty no matter who is perpetuating it.
Closets keep people safe. You’re not exposing her just to ridicule, you’re exposing her to potential physical harm, death threats, and possible rape. Every single bit of which falls on the heads of those who outed a person forcefully and cheered it on.
Reltzik
Except exposing Robing also exposes her to losing the election, which reduces the exposure of millions to her homophobic agenda.
Still a shitty thing to do, but we might be in the gray area where two shits make a piss.
…. YESIKNOWTHATSATERRIBLEMETAPHOR.
Confusedinmorethanoneway
Doing something morally reprehensible “for the greater good”…yeah that sounds familiar. Let’s resist the urge to ALL sink to that level, shall we?
MatthewTheLucky
Not all of us are deontologists, man.
Briny
” …the greater goood…”
fishsicles
SHUT IT
Lailah
Prosper, as T’au shall.
CoMa
OHO! Is that a Hot Fuzz-reference I’m spotting??!
I mean *coughcough* “The greater good…”
Could also be a Warhammer40k ref. The Tao use The Greater Good as their thing, as well.
CoMa
I lack the background of that (meaning I never heard about Warhammer 40k in my life) – I was just reminded of Hot Fuzz, but thanks for the info! I never new there were other “the greater good”-mumblers out there!
It might sound familiar because that’s exactly what Robin is doing for a living. Maybe just the threat of becoming someone else’s sacrifice for the greater good herself is enough to get her to realize it’s not how one should behave. Particularly when that threat is implicit in just a picture of her existing.
Which is all Leslie has done to her so far.
NelC
Except that the homophobia is that of Robin’s party and her voters. Do you think the party will put a homophile in her place?
Freemage
No, but unless she’s carrying 70% or more of the vote, then those homophobic voters are likely to stay home for the next election–which means you get a moderate Democrat (it’s too much to hope for a liberal in a largely rural Indiana district), instead.
BBCC
Actually, this district goes back and forth between the parties regularly. It wouldn’t be impossible to get a liberal – maybe more unlikely, but this is hardly the ‘stereotypical redneck’ area Robin thinks it is. She probably thinks so because she considers that to be her voting base.
Reltzik
What Freemage said. Also, on the morale front, it takes a bit of the wind out of their sales for a spell.
3-I
Please don’t ever say “homophile” again.
Wizard
Nope, sorry, “outing” people is a shitty thing to do. Even if they’re shitheads and your motives are noble, you’re still doing something shitty.
The politics of outing are extremely complex and context-specific.
Like, yes, outing tends to usually be awful. Largely because for the majority of individuals who are in a sexuality or gender closet, they are that way for a very important reason (either because they are not fully aware of their identity or view it as unsafe to come out). And that second part tends to ring hard.
We’ve all encountered the trans and gay folks who’ve been disowned, kicked out of their homes, ended up homeless, thrown out of jobs, been beaten or raped, or straight up murdered for the “crime” of coming out. And having another person out you means you don’t even get to prepare yourself for the impact of that.
But that’s for most people. For professional homophobes who are gay, the closet they hide behind is not for the protection of their safety, but rather to protect their reputation as a professional bigot, and their actions end up contributing directly to the environment that makes it so fraught for so many to come out.
And many times they use their closet like a weapon, often seeking out for sex the most marginalized members of the queer community, professional sex workers or homeless youth who can be intimidated into silence in order to get themselves off. Taking advantage of the very desperation they create in order to access cheap and readily accessible underground sex.
And while there is no clear consensus in the queer community about outing these figures, it has been the case that leaps in certain queer rights, most notably marriage rights have been tied to the outing of anti-gay figures as the hypocrisy did not play well to the mushy middle.
And the people who outed them tended to be individuals on the raggedy edge who took great personal risk to themselves outing a client, especially one with so much social power and an army of angry murderous homophobes at their beck and call to get revenge through.
Outing this group is less clear-cut and there is value in exposing the hypocrisy involved.
That all said, Robin is not seeking out homeless sex workers to get her rocks off. She’s just happened to fall for a hot college teacher. That feels different in principle if maybe not in practice.
Regardless of anything, it is worth noting that Leslie is not just anyone. She’s lived on the streets as a queer teenager and may have had to do what she needed to to survive. And during that time she certainly saw others make much tougher choices and some starve to death, owing to painful coming out or being outed situations.
Whatever her decision is here, it is not being made lightly.
Lailah
Outing them literally doesn’t help though. There is no brutal analysis that can avert this fact. It’s not really ‘gray’ without that. It’s just revenge.
When Larry Craig and Ted Haggard were outed, it actually had real measurable effects on homophobic legislation and swung the public perception on the gay marriage debate and robbed a lot of power from the homophobic position. Similarly, outing leaders of ex-gay organizations as still having queer sex on the down-low did a lot to discredit those organizations’ central argument that they were genuinely changing orientations thus saving a lot of kids from those hellish places.
It’s not just revenge. Revenge would be a lot easier to morally process.
maxyai
I’m from Idaho and Larry Craig still vehemently denies that he is gay. So do his wife and kids. The local paper actually sent a reporter to Washington DC to troll all the local gay hangouts to try and dig something up. They came up with bupkis. So technically his status is still “straight.” He just has a wide stance.
Griiins
So he is bi-sexual with a heavy lean toward hetrosexual, good to know.
Ted Haggard maintains he prayed himself straight too, but neither of those individuals have loomed so large in their movements since they were outed. It defanged them to a large extent even if their core base still believed that they were straight men unfairly maligned by evil homosexual demons.
George Alan Rekers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Alan_Rekers ) was similarly defanged after being outed having queer sex on the downlow. That one was especially important as it stripped a lot of the strength of the faux-academic case of the homophobes regarding the “danger” homosexuals poised in adopting children thus fast-forwarding the right to adopt in a lot of states.
Falcon
It’s weird. If someone had seduced Robin on purpose in order to get incriminating photos, I’d have found the whole thing entertaining and I wouldn’t have much problem with it. If that someone had even gone in thinking they’d get to know Robin and decide whether to destroy her when the time came, I’d also have been fine with that.
But Robin reached out to Leslie, and Leslie reached out to her. This betrayal of trust feels bad to me because it betrayed nobler intentions, strayed from the path Leslie was trying to walk. It feels like Leslie is betraying herself.
Also, it feels like a betrayal of Roz’s trust. My understanding is that Roz put Leslie in touch with Robin partly for selfish reasons, partly so Leslie could have her shot at somehow catching Robin’s eye. Roz did not sign up to destroy her sister this way. She might be happy that Robin gets kicked out of office, but I suspect her trust in Leslie would be broken as well.
That’s not to say this issue is cut and dried either way. Lincoln (2012) is a glorious movie about the greatest president of the United States abolishing slavery for all time by bribing people with jobs and actively deceiving Congress on the imminence of peace with the South. Not everything the good guys do is good, and not everything the bad guys do is bad.
Tgape
There isn’t a clear betrayal of trust until the photo is used. Leslie is, in this strip, merely taking a prudent CYA action. If she’s the thoughtful and considerate person she attempts to be for her class, and Robin has a real change of heart and mends her ways, that is as far as this will go, and years later, this will be just a photo album pic of their first morning together. I mean, maybe next week or two, story timeline. 😉
But this is Dumbing of Age, so of course that’s not what will happen.
Falcon
Leslie’s taking the picture in anger. She’s used Robin coming over and letting down her guard to create a weapon to take down Robin. That to me is already a breaching of trust, even if it’s a prudent course of action.
549 thoughts on “Poke”
Ana Chronistic
BF: “So did they ever show who they’re looking at?”
Me: …
BF: …?
Me: “THEY’RE TAKING SELFIES”
[/real story]
Needfuldoer
“Hillary’s Millennial supporters turn their backs on her! How she lost her key demographic.” -FreedomEagle1776 News on Facebook
Pro tip: Practice aiming the rear camera at yourself without looking at the screen. Front cameras are always lower resolution, and don’t cope with low light as well.
Huttj509
I was watching So You Think You Can Dance a year ago, and was wondering why when the dancer was walking by the crowd all the screaming fans were turning away from him.
It, um, took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize why.
BagFaceMan
I’m gonna feel stupid in a moment, but…
Why?
Silly Name
To take a photo where both the dancer and them (the fans taking photos) would be visible in the shoot, I guess.
StClair
Apparently, the new thing is to document for oneself and friends, “See, I was there – I took this pic.”
Pat
That is… hardly “new.”
Joseph
It’s new on a cosmic scale! Pretty much everything we ever care about is.
Doctor_Who
#StevenUniverseMarathon
Mr. Mendo
Oh Leslie, this is a dangerous game you’re playing…
At least make her some breakfast, jeez…
Durandal_1707
Oh, I totally called this last week.
Durandal_1707
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/no-3/
Mr. Mendo
Well, there it is. 😉
Siddlaw
ANOTHER DeSanto sex scandal.
Reltzik
Watch her approval ratings hinge on the rumors of a sex tape.
Mr. Mendo
Worked in The Candidate!
Mr. Mendo
Campaign! I meant The Campaign!
BenRG
It would be deeply ironic if Robin’s numbers skyrocket because the ‘good’ people of Bloomington thing the idea of their representative having had lesbian sex with a ‘hot blonde chick’ is a positive thing.
Yes, I am that cynical about human behaviour when dealing with large groups.
Deanatay
Most of the people on this comment board are fairly progressive, LGBTQ-friendly types. As such, they all need to keep one important thing in mind:
America is FAR more conservative than our experiences will tell us it is.
Progressives tend to surround themselves with progressive friends, live in progressive-friendly neighborhoods, and filter their news towards progressive topics. This means there are LARGE SWATHS of Americana (and Canadiana? Australiana? Other ‘-ana’s? Are those the right terms?) we are completely unfamiliar with. We walk blindly into elections, confident that our side will win, because everyone we know is gung-ho for it, and we’re completely poleaxed when we lose, because who would have voted against us?
The solution? We need to tear our filters down. We need to listen to the hate rhetoric the other side is spewing, even though it disgusts us. We need to understand just how strong our opponents are, if only to know how hard we need to fight them.
(Wow, that turned out long. Probably not even the best place for it. But then, what is?)
izzy
But I don’t find Breitbart all that informative or even entertaining for that matter.
Pat
Empathic people who care about others and “filter their news” towards, actual news should listen to the people who None of the Above more? Uh, maybe people who don’t listen or learn need to do some.
Killjoy
Even at the most cynical and adversarial level… one should know one’s enemies.
Pat
We already do. Almost by definition.
Killjoy
And if one side isn’t willing to tear down its echo chamber and rip out its filters and stop acting like there are multiple Americas… then they can’t really ask the other side to do it.
Pat
One “side’s” “echo chamber” is called “reality”, though.
They’re. Not. Sports teams.
TheGrammarLegionary
Disclaimer: I’m not American, and therefore not strictly a ‘Democrat’. That said, I’m very left-leaning in my personal views.
We on the left DO have our own echo chamber. Everyone has their reasons for jumping into one, but if you think the right-wing doesn’t also think their echo chamber is “reality”, then frankly, you’re missing the concept. There was a video of some British guy going absolutely ballistic making the rounds after Trump got elected making some very good points about this; above all, he pointed out that the left won the culture war. No, homophobia didn’t end last year with the supreme court decision in June, just like racism is still a thing; that didn’t end in the ’60s either. But we liberals are all too comfortable (myself included) with calling nearly half of America “a basket of deplorables”.
There’s evidence of this echo chamber effect on the left. Ask most Democrats if they remember the “Delete your account” tweet, they’ll smile as they relive the assorted variations of “DAAAAAAMN, SON!” we all screamed like Clinton had just dropped the mic at a rap battle. Ask if they remember Trump’s response, they almost certainly never saw it, and probably didn’t/don’t care. But he had one: “Just like the 30,000 emails you deleted?” Sure, the national security threat was blown out of perspective, but she’s admitted that it happened, and that it was a mistake.
Again, still would’ve voted Clinton… but damn, son.
I’m not saying all opinions are created equal, I’m not saying our echo chamber is just as harmful as the one on the right, but we do ourselves no favours by hiding in it. Step out of it, SNAP out of it, and engage in the debate, because we didn’t win the culture war by simply knowing we were on the right side of history. It came from boycotting buses and the Stonewall riots and people actually communicating with the other side however they could. And sharing every #BlackLivesMatter and #ImWithHer with all your liberal friends ISN’T communicating with the other side.
You’re absolutely right that these aren’t sports teams we’re dealing with, and this is NOT A GAME. This isn’t even a culture war anymore (though it could be if we undo the progress of the last decade). This is now a crash course in advanced civics, and we have four years to pick our grades up or just keep having this conversation. America can’t get away with having an uneducated public anymore. NO nation can get away with it anymore, because the blueprint has been laid out, and to use one more tired cliché, if we don’t learn from history, we will repeat it. But this time, it won’t be centuries or decades later, it’ll be across space instead. Across borders. The demagogues and narcissists will take over, and we’ll be back to tyrants starting wars to soothe their inflated egos.
And yes, I say this as a non-American. I’m watching this from the outside. But the second you think “oh, that can’t happen here”, you’re making the same mistake. All non-Americans reading this, check your political landscape and look around. My fellow Canadians in particular, don’t be complacent because we just elected Trudeau, we’re not them; we are not the liberal haven we’d like to think. I live in a town where “Fuck Trudeau” bumper stickers are common and on my way home from work, I can see “WHITE POWER” literally etched into the sidewalk. I took pictures before the snow covered it. Google “Kevin O’Leary”, and then tell me Trump can’t happen here.
BBCC
Also – Kellie Leitch.
It’s one thing to say a group is deplorable – that can be (and is) true, just looking at what they’ve backed. It’s another not to engage them where you see them. Sometimes you can’t – lack of spoons, lack of time, whatever. But if you can, it can be a good thing.
thejeff
No, we didn’t “win” the culture war. We’re still in the middle of it. Hell, we didn’t even “win” the racial or gender equivalents. Those are still going on too. We just lost a major battle in all of them, probably more than one.
We’ve won some battles, but the other side has retrenched and is coming back strong.
And we didn’t really win any of those battles by sitting down politely with the racists and the sexists and the homophobes and listening to all the reasons why they hated and explaining why they should stop. The battles were won with boycotts and riots and organization. By people standing up and saying “We are here and we have rights and we are not going away.” And then someone else stepping up when the first one got smashed down.
On the individual level, with friends and family you can sometimes make progress through communication. Especially with someone coming out as queer, since they knew you and liked you before then – not so much with race and gender. Even then though it’s at great risk. Lots of people have lost friends and family over it. Many suffered abuse or worse.
TheGrammarLegionary
Perhaps “win” is a little strong… but that doesn’t change the fact that the Trump supporters are, in many people’s minds, a pack of racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted degenerates (and let’s sprinkle in some jokes about cousins in Alabama for good measure). And what’s more, this is the accepted party line from the left now. “Basket of deplorables”. As in ‘if you voted Republican, we’re allowed to say this about you’. No, racism is not over, homophobia isn’t over, misogyny is NOT OVER. Anyone who says they are is not paying attention. But short of the drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, the racists at least have to hide that or we tear them apart. And I’m glad we recognize these things for what they are now, and I’m glad bigotry has consequences. But we need to remember this:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/outrage/
We the commenters unleashed all manner of vitriol on Roz for this. Yes, Joyce was already coming around, I read the threads. The point is, insults are a lousy debate tool. No, we didn’t make the progress of the last fifty years with polite conversation and calm, gentle education, and I never said we did. It came from communication, or perhaps more accurately, expression. When words failed, the civil rights movement expressed its anger through actions. They got louder, and they articulated their positions in the language of fire and rage. Birmingham. Stonewall. Malcolm X.
Things are different now. You’re exactly right that we are now LOSING battles, but we are still ahead of where we were in the ’60s. Our side has real power now, even without the political power of the Obama administration. We rarely need to resort to riots anymore, and we sure as hell don’t need to resort to hurling insults. What we need is to continue engaging, in the media (not social media, in our echo chambers, going outside) and on an individual level. NOW is the time for conversation and rational debate. Like BBCC said above, it’s not always possible, it’s still not even always safe. But if we take what opportunities we have, we can finish this. Peacefully.
Three hours ago, I had a friend (trans) tell me about the time he tried to kill himself. I would have been almost the last person he spoke to. I had done everything I could. And this feeling is familiar now. Every time I hear the old lines (‘love the sinner, hate the sin’, ‘pray for them to change’, ‘it’s a choice, they can live differently’), I have to step away and breathe before I tear into them and their worldview. I’ve learned that you can’t smash through the bubble from the outside; you have to be let in first and disrupt the echoes there. Any time I’ve ever seen someone come around on things like this, it has been from inside the bubble. So engage, personally, and teach them how to break out.
Killjoy
Right up until the returns started coming in, the American “left” was telling itself that Hillary Clinton had election in the bag…
Killjoy
If you think only one side has an echo chamber… that probably makes my point for me.
Toad
The left does not have a monopoly on truth, and the right does not have a monopoly on propaganda/lies/”fake news”. Anyone presenting the news to you has an agenda of some sort–it is important to keep this in mind when considering the “official story,” no matter who it comes from. There is no genuinely neutral, objective read on any news story of consequence.
For instance, consider that 50% of Clinton voters polled believe that Russians tampered with the actual vote count (beyond simple pre-election propaganda/leaks), despite there being no evidence of this whatsoever, probably in large part because generally reputable news agencies keep talking about Russia “hacking” the election. There have been countless examples from this election alone of well-meaning liberals sharing articles and memes built on misleading quotes, misused statistics, or outright fabrications.
Donald Trump is gleeful and blatant in his disregard for facts, in a way rarely seen in American politics. But do not make the mistake of thinking that this means that his political opponents necessarily have facts on their side. I have a healthy skepticism about the whole idea that liberals, leftists, and minorities have to go try to forge connections with their political opponents–as you say, politics is real and important, not just an academic ideological pastime. But do not think for a second that liberals live in “reality” while conservatives live in a fantasy world.
Pat
We don’t have a monopoly on truth. We do however, have positions that are truth-based. That’s kind of important.
Rose
As a trans person, I am perfectly aware that there are tons of people who want me to disappear without a sound. That’s why I place myself in environments like the ones you describe. So I can remain myself, and safe.
Honestly, the minorities are not surprised when this stuff goes down. We expect it. We know who’s out there. We deal with them IRL constantly. That outpouring of disbelief and rage is because we believe that the world is better than the baseline.
The answer isn’t to try to “understand” the extremist normal. It’s to defend what we have with every scrap of fire we can summon, and to make it normal, in little ways and little places, so that others, closeted, out there in hostile territory, will someday find us and realize that they are not alone. Like I had to. Like most of my friends did.
This isn’t about diplomacy. It’s about passing the torch. It’s survival. I will forgive their trespass when they forget that they hate my existence.
Killjoy
Somehow we talk about the broader “right”, and it always snaps right back to “those people who hate _____”… as if everyone to the “right” of line X on any issue is also a bigot/racist/sexist/genderist/whatever. Or maybe as if that’s the only issue in the world.
Jewelfox
If you happen to be one of the people they hate so much that they want you to die, that “issue” may as well be the only one that matters.
Same goes for if there’s someone you care about that you’re trying to protect from them.
Rose
I have plenty of conservative friends. I’m not referring to them. I am rather displeased with them right now, because I believe their wilful ignorance of part of their community is creating something dangerous for me, but they are not the core issue. The core issue is that there are people who don’t want me to exist. Those people are who I have to consider when I’m building my life.
I’m really tired of the “left’s responsible for this too! take your lumps!” I’m not responsible for the democratic party’s foul. I’m going to take those lumps anyway. So’s the rest of my community. That’s why we’ve been so damn mad.
BBCC
……You seem to be forgetting that the polls all (or majority wise) predicted a Clinton win too. This wasn’t just people being poleaxed because disagreement. The win surprised everyone – pollsters, election experts, and most people, including Trump supporters too.
Listening to news from either side (as long as it’s actual news and not faux news) is one thing. That said, people will make friends with people who respect them. Bigots fundamentally do not respect marginalized folks and reducing it to partisan issues or ‘political opinions’ is a dismissal of said marginalized people’s humanity.
People also aren’t going to live somewhere they are not safe if they can help it, so for marginalized people, it makes most sense to live around people who don’t want to remove their civil rights.
Keeping yourself safe and your friendships, y’know, friendships are not immoral echo chamber actions. They’re the way friendships and (ideal) living situations work.
ety
Ohhh, Leslie is going to regret this.
Bluewind
There’s also the possibility that they have a heart to heart and Leslie deletes it (like Sal did with that app)… or that she will try to delete it and end up sending it to everyone on her phone.
Shade
In hindsight putting the delete option right next to the immediately send to all contacts without asking for confirmation option seems like a deliberate design law.
Shade
*flaw rather
Griiins
no no, I think Design law is the correct usage, those guys knew what they were doing.
Oberon
I’d think that you made a typo when you used ‘law’ instead of ‘flaw,’ but then I realized just how appropriate that phrasing was.
Griiins
Phrasing! its fun for the whole family (sold right next to apples to apples!)
AlexanderHammil
REVENGE!
AlexanderHammil
No closet for professional homophobes do itttttttttttt
Confusedinmorethanoneway
Having one set of rules for some of the population and one set for another based on what they believe is shitty no matter who is perpetuating it.
Closets keep people safe. You’re not exposing her just to ridicule, you’re exposing her to potential physical harm, death threats, and possible rape. Every single bit of which falls on the heads of those who outed a person forcefully and cheered it on.
Reltzik
Except exposing Robing also exposes her to losing the election, which reduces the exposure of millions to her homophobic agenda.
Still a shitty thing to do, but we might be in the gray area where two shits make a piss.
…. YESIKNOWTHATSATERRIBLEMETAPHOR.
Confusedinmorethanoneway
Doing something morally reprehensible “for the greater good”…yeah that sounds familiar. Let’s resist the urge to ALL sink to that level, shall we?
MatthewTheLucky
Not all of us are deontologists, man.
Briny
” …the greater goood…”
fishsicles
SHUT IT
Lailah
Prosper, as T’au shall.
CoMa
OHO! Is that a Hot Fuzz-reference I’m spotting??!
I mean *coughcough* “The greater good…”
a snow ʍousɐ
IKR? Great reference
Kamino Neko
Could also be a Warhammer40k ref. The Tao use The Greater Good as their thing, as well.
CoMa
I lack the background of that (meaning I never heard about Warhammer 40k in my life) – I was just reminded of Hot Fuzz, but thanks for the info! I never new there were other “the greater good”-mumblers out there!
AM
It might sound familiar because that’s exactly what Robin is doing for a living. Maybe just the threat of becoming someone else’s sacrifice for the greater good herself is enough to get her to realize it’s not how one should behave. Particularly when that threat is implicit in just a picture of her existing.
Which is all Leslie has done to her so far.
NelC
Except that the homophobia is that of Robin’s party and her voters. Do you think the party will put a homophile in her place?
Freemage
No, but unless she’s carrying 70% or more of the vote, then those homophobic voters are likely to stay home for the next election–which means you get a moderate Democrat (it’s too much to hope for a liberal in a largely rural Indiana district), instead.
BBCC
Actually, this district goes back and forth between the parties regularly. It wouldn’t be impossible to get a liberal – maybe more unlikely, but this is hardly the ‘stereotypical redneck’ area Robin thinks it is. She probably thinks so because she considers that to be her voting base.
Reltzik
What Freemage said. Also, on the morale front, it takes a bit of the wind out of their sales for a spell.
3-I
Please don’t ever say “homophile” again.
Wizard
Nope, sorry, “outing” people is a shitty thing to do. Even if they’re shitheads and your motives are noble, you’re still doing something shitty.
skaryzgik
I would worry she’d get primaried by someone running even further to her right.
Cerberus
The politics of outing are extremely complex and context-specific.
Like, yes, outing tends to usually be awful. Largely because for the majority of individuals who are in a sexuality or gender closet, they are that way for a very important reason (either because they are not fully aware of their identity or view it as unsafe to come out). And that second part tends to ring hard.
We’ve all encountered the trans and gay folks who’ve been disowned, kicked out of their homes, ended up homeless, thrown out of jobs, been beaten or raped, or straight up murdered for the “crime” of coming out. And having another person out you means you don’t even get to prepare yourself for the impact of that.
But that’s for most people. For professional homophobes who are gay, the closet they hide behind is not for the protection of their safety, but rather to protect their reputation as a professional bigot, and their actions end up contributing directly to the environment that makes it so fraught for so many to come out.
And many times they use their closet like a weapon, often seeking out for sex the most marginalized members of the queer community, professional sex workers or homeless youth who can be intimidated into silence in order to get themselves off. Taking advantage of the very desperation they create in order to access cheap and readily accessible underground sex.
And while there is no clear consensus in the queer community about outing these figures, it has been the case that leaps in certain queer rights, most notably marriage rights have been tied to the outing of anti-gay figures as the hypocrisy did not play well to the mushy middle.
And the people who outed them tended to be individuals on the raggedy edge who took great personal risk to themselves outing a client, especially one with so much social power and an army of angry murderous homophobes at their beck and call to get revenge through.
Outing this group is less clear-cut and there is value in exposing the hypocrisy involved.
That all said, Robin is not seeking out homeless sex workers to get her rocks off. She’s just happened to fall for a hot college teacher. That feels different in principle if maybe not in practice.
Regardless of anything, it is worth noting that Leslie is not just anyone. She’s lived on the streets as a queer teenager and may have had to do what she needed to to survive. And during that time she certainly saw others make much tougher choices and some starve to death, owing to painful coming out or being outed situations.
Whatever her decision is here, it is not being made lightly.
Lailah
Outing them literally doesn’t help though. There is no brutal analysis that can avert this fact. It’s not really ‘gray’ without that. It’s just revenge.
Cerberus
Except it can.
When Larry Craig and Ted Haggard were outed, it actually had real measurable effects on homophobic legislation and swung the public perception on the gay marriage debate and robbed a lot of power from the homophobic position. Similarly, outing leaders of ex-gay organizations as still having queer sex on the down-low did a lot to discredit those organizations’ central argument that they were genuinely changing orientations thus saving a lot of kids from those hellish places.
It’s not just revenge. Revenge would be a lot easier to morally process.
maxyai
I’m from Idaho and Larry Craig still vehemently denies that he is gay. So do his wife and kids. The local paper actually sent a reporter to Washington DC to troll all the local gay hangouts to try and dig something up. They came up with bupkis. So technically his status is still “straight.” He just has a wide stance.
Griiins
So he is bi-sexual with a heavy lean toward hetrosexual, good to know.
Cerberus
Ted Haggard maintains he prayed himself straight too, but neither of those individuals have loomed so large in their movements since they were outed. It defanged them to a large extent even if their core base still believed that they were straight men unfairly maligned by evil homosexual demons.
George Alan Rekers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Alan_Rekers ) was similarly defanged after being outed having queer sex on the downlow. That one was especially important as it stripped a lot of the strength of the faux-academic case of the homophobes regarding the “danger” homosexuals poised in adopting children thus fast-forwarding the right to adopt in a lot of states.
Falcon
It’s weird. If someone had seduced Robin on purpose in order to get incriminating photos, I’d have found the whole thing entertaining and I wouldn’t have much problem with it. If that someone had even gone in thinking they’d get to know Robin and decide whether to destroy her when the time came, I’d also have been fine with that.
But Robin reached out to Leslie, and Leslie reached out to her. This betrayal of trust feels bad to me because it betrayed nobler intentions, strayed from the path Leslie was trying to walk. It feels like Leslie is betraying herself.
Also, it feels like a betrayal of Roz’s trust. My understanding is that Roz put Leslie in touch with Robin partly for selfish reasons, partly so Leslie could have her shot at somehow catching Robin’s eye. Roz did not sign up to destroy her sister this way. She might be happy that Robin gets kicked out of office, but I suspect her trust in Leslie would be broken as well.
That’s not to say this issue is cut and dried either way. Lincoln (2012) is a glorious movie about the greatest president of the United States abolishing slavery for all time by bribing people with jobs and actively deceiving Congress on the imminence of peace with the South. Not everything the good guys do is good, and not everything the bad guys do is bad.
Tgape
There isn’t a clear betrayal of trust until the photo is used. Leslie is, in this strip, merely taking a prudent CYA action. If she’s the thoughtful and considerate person she attempts to be for her class, and Robin has a real change of heart and mends her ways, that is as far as this will go, and years later, this will be just a photo album pic of their first morning together. I mean, maybe next week or two, story timeline. 😉
But this is Dumbing of Age, so of course that’s not what will happen.
Falcon
Leslie’s taking the picture in anger. She’s used Robin coming over and letting down her guard to create a weapon to take down Robin. That to me is already a breaching of trust, even if it’s a prudent course of action.